London Fashion Week Trends: Spring/Summer 2017

COLOUR, hemlines, prints: unlike New York, where many brands stuck to their signatures, London was a melting pot of ideas where everything seemed up for discussion. Apart from the conundrum of the week – Christopher Kane’s Crocs: do you dare? – much of the chatter centred around Burberry’s mammoth see-now-buy-now show, where 83 looks inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando signalled a new era in fashion. But there were plenty of other designers who offered game-changing looks for spring/summer 2017. Here are five trends we loved from London Fashion Week.

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The Single Earring

Earrings have swollen from mint to sweetie to gobstopper size in recent seasons, but for spring, the new, bold way to wear them is singly, and in a size that suggest steroids were involved. At Simone Rocha, mismatched crystal earrings in paint-box brights included one that mimicked the dimensions of a keyring; at JW Anderson scores of tiny silver bells were attached to create one giant ear ornament; and at Mary Katrantzou’s Ancient Greece-themed show, virtually life-sized olive branches rendered in poppy-coated metals jangled down necks.

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The Languid Dress

Dresses are always a summer story but this season they’re languid and loose, doing away with the more structured shapes and evening fabrics that populated the autumn catwalks. At Roksanda, they were bias cut and rendered in a heavy silk that semaphored haute-casual ease thanks to sporty stripes on cuffs and necklines; at Paul Smith they were knotted and lined in a contrasting colour; at Erdem, they exposed the shoulders and flared gently at the ankle.

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The Statement Sleeve

Stylists had fun this season rolling sleeves up, yanking them down to expose shoulders, shredding them open and studding them with bangles - and designers did too. Marques’Almeida’s were our favourite, either sheer and layered over vintage basketball T-shirts or oversized, hems virtually grazing knees, but Simone Rocha, JW Anderson and Christopher Kane also deserve special mention, some puffed and enlarged, others studded with crystals.

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The Uneven Hemline

Handkerchief hemlines have long been a JW Anderson preoccupation – this season he even went so far as to construct a dress entirely out of white Irish linen handkerchiefs to really ram the point home. Our favourite, though were the ones that had been cut straight and then curved into an S-shape, leaving panels to spiral in ombre hues. Elsewhere, Johnny Coca at Mulberry played with jagged hems, and at Preen, Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi hoiked them up and then yanked them down again in various states of punkish rebellion.

Micro Florals

Splashy florals never die but this season’s most interesting came in small nostalgic sprigs, as seen at Emilia Wickstead; in tiny, intricate garlands sprinkled with Pentagrams in Preen's witchcraft-inspired collection; and in Erdem's beautiful linen and silk dresses, where tiny crowns and Roman numerals were hidden within microflorals.